Description:
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Why are the small and unimportant relics of Roman antiquity often the most enduring, in material form and in our affections? Through close encounters with minor things such as insects, brief lives, quibbles, irritants, and jokes, Emily Gowers provocatively argues that much of what the Romans dismissed as superfluous or peripheral in fact took up immense imaginative space. It was often through the small stuff that the Romans most acutely probed and challenged their society's overarching values and priorities and its sense of proportion and justice. There is much to learn from what didn't or shouldn't matter. By marking the spots where the apparently pointless becomes significant, this book radically adjusts our understanding of the Romans and their world, as well as our own minor feelings and intimate preoccupations.Review Quotes:
"Gowers makes a wonderfully appealing case, revealing the ways in which things usually considered trivial or unworthy of 'imaginative space and attention' are often the best tools for probing and challenging a society's overarching values, priorities and sense of proportion and justice. She sets about her task with loose-limbed brio, drawing on a dazzling array of ancient and modern texts and images, and giving free rein to her formidable powers of linguistic analysis."
-- "The Literary Review"